A very important safety aspect of automobile maintenance is the proper inflation of the tires. As those of ordinary skill in the art will appreciate, under pressured tires and over-pressured tires result in significant problems such as accelerated wear and poor responsiveness. These problems may cause, for example, several personal injury accidents from a blow-out or premature tire replacement.
Most consumers are not skilled or trained in determining when air pressure in an automobile tire is under-inflated or over-inflated. Hence, these types of air pressure maintenance issues go undetected until the tire is seriously under-inflated or over-inflated. It should be noted that as used herein, the term automobile refers to a car, truck, sports utility vehicle, all terrain vehicle, motorcycle or bicycle.
Today's automobile manufacturers are incorporating sensor devices that detect and alert the driver as to low tire air pressures.
Prior art devices are very cumbersome and awkward to use. Additionally, the prior art designs contribute to consumers shunning their use. Prior art devices tend to rely on the consumer being able to read the pressure gauge and the consumer knowing when to stop inflation. However, the prior art designs simply exacerbate the problem because it leads to over-inflation. Additionally, prior art devices are poorly placed at filing stations. The end result is that most consumers do not check the inflation on their tires in a timely manner and even when they do, the tires remain either under-pressured or over-pressured.
Therefore, there is a need for an automated device for tire pressure maintenance. There is also a need for a device and method that will conveniently and efficiently check on air pressure level in automobile tires. There is also a need for a device and method that will either inflate or deflate the automobile tire automatically based on an accurate pressure reading. There is a need for a tire pressure maintenance device that can be easily used while filling an automobile with fuel (i.e. gasoline, diesel, etc). These needs, as well as many other needs, will be met by the following disclosure.